A WARNING.
One evening, as Gretchen was sitting outside of the lodge, she saw the
figure of a woman moving cautiously about in the dim openings of the
fir-trees. It was not the form of an Indian woman--its movement was
mysterious. Gretchen started up and stood looking into the darkening
shadows of the firs. Suddenly the form came out of the clearing--it was
Mrs. Woods. She waved her hand and beckoned to Gretchen, and then drew
back into the forest and disappeared.
Gretchen went toward the openings where Mrs. Woods had so suddenly and
strangely appeared. But no one was there. She wondered what the secret of
the mysterious episode could be. She returned to the lodge, but said
nothing about what she had seen. She passed a sleepless night, and
resolved to go to see her foster-mother on the following day.
So, after school the next afternoon, she returned to her old home for a
brief visit, and to gain an explanation of the strange event of the
evening before.
She found Mrs. Woods very sad, and evidently troubled by some ominous
experience.
"So you saw me?" was her first salutation. "I didn't dare to come any
further. They did not see me--did they?"
"But, mother, why did you go away--why did you come to the lodge?"
"O Gretchen, husband has been at home from the shingle-mill, and he has
told me something dreadful!"
"What, mother?"
"There's a conspiracy!"
"Where?"
"Among the Injuns. A friendly Injun told husband in secret that there
would be no more seen of the log school-house after the Potlatch."
"Don't fear, mother; the chief and Benjamin will protect that."
"But that isn't all, Gretchen. Oh, I am so glad that you have come home!
There are dark shadows around us everywhere. I can feel 'em--can't you?
The atmosphere is all full of dark faces and evil thoughts. I can't bear
to sleep alone here now. Gretchen, there's a plot to capture the
schoolmaster."
"Don't fear, mother. I know Umatilla--he will never permit it."
"But, Gretchen, the Injun told husband something awful."
"What?"
"That the schoolmaster would one day perish as Dr. Whitman did. Dr.
Whitman was stricken down by the Injun whom he regarded as his best
friend, and he never knew who dealt the blow. He went out of life like one
smitten by lightning. O Gretchen!"
"But, mother, I do not fear. The Indians thought that Dr. Whitman was a
conjurer. We make people true, the master says, by putting confidence in
them. I believe in the old chief and in Benjamin, and there will no evil
ever come to the schoolmaster or the log school-house."
"Gretchen, are you sure? Then I did not bring you away out here for
nothing, did I? You may be the angel of deliverance of us all. Who knows?
But, Gretchen, I haven't told you all yet."
Mrs. Woods's face clouded again.
"The Injun told husband that some of the warriors had formed a plot
against _me_, and that, if they were to capture me, they would torture me.
Gretchen, I am afraid. Don't you pity me?"
"Mother, I know my power over the chief and Benjamin, and I know the power
of a chief's sense of honor. I do pity you, you are so distressed. But,
mother, no evil will ever come to you where I am, nor the school where I
am. I am going to be a teacher among these Indians, if I live; I feel this
calling, and my work will somehow begin here."
"A teacher among the Injuns! You? You a teacher? Are anvils going to fly?
Here I am, a poor lone woman, away out here three thousand miles from
home, and tremblin' all over, at every sound that I hear at night, for
fear I shall be attacked by Injuns, and you are dreamin', with your head
all full of poetry, of goin' away and leavin' me, the best friend that you
ever had on the earth, as good as a mother to you; of goin' away--of
leavin' me, to teach a lot of savages! Gretchen, I knew that the world was
full of empty heads, but I never realized how empty the human heart is
until now! Been a mother to you, too!"
"O mother, I never thought of leavin' you unless you wished it."
"What did you think was goin' to become of me? I never kissed any child
but you, and sometimes, when you are real good, I feel just as though I
was your mother."
"I thought that you would help me."
"Help you, what doin'?"
"To teach the Indians."
"To teach the Injuns--Indians you call 'em! I'd like to teach one Injun to
bring back my saw! I never tried to teach but one Injun--and he was _him_.
You can't make an eagle run around a door-yard like a goose, and you can't
teach an Injun to saw wood--the first thing you know, the saw will be
missin'.--But how I am runnin' on! I do have a good deal of prejudice
against the savages; nevertheless--"
"I knew, mother, that you would say 'nevertheless.' It seems to me that
word is your good spirit. I wish you would tell me what thought came to
your mind when you said that word."
"'Nevertheless?'"
"Yes."
"Well, the Master--"
"He said--"
"Yes--preach the gospel to every creature! I suppose that meant Injuns and
all."
"Yes--he said '_teach_'--so the schoolmaster explained it."
"Did he? Well, I ought to obey it in spirit--hadn't I?--or at least not
hinder others. I might help you teach it if I could get into the right
spirit. But what put that thought into your head?"
"Mrs. Spaulding, the missionary, has been to visit the school. She sang so
beautifully! These were the words:
"'In the desert let me labor,
On the mountain let me tell.'
"When she sung that, it all came to me--what I was--what I was sent into
the world to do--what was the cause of your loving me and bringing me out
here--I saw a plan in it all. Then, too, it came to me that you would at
first not see the calling as I do, but that you would say _nevertheless_,
and help me, and that we would work together, and do some good in the
world, you and I. Oh! I saw it all."
"Gretchen, did you see all that? Do you think that the spirit has eyes,
and that they see true? But how could I begin? The Injuns all hate me."
"Make them love you."
"How?"
"Say _nevertheless_ to them."
"Well, Gretchen, you are a good girl, and I am sorry for the hard things
that I have said. I do not feel that I have shown just the right spirit
toward Benjamin. But he has said that he will not do me any harm, for the
sake of his master, and I am willin' to give up my will for my Master. It
is those that give up their desires that have their desires in this world,
and anybody who does an injury to another makes for himself a judgment-day
of some sort. You may tell Benjamin that I am real sorry for bein' hard to
him, and that, if he will come over and see me, I'll give him a carved
pipe that husband made. Now, Gretchen, you may go, and I'll sit down and
think a spell. I'll be dreadful lonely when you're gone."
Gretchen kissed her foster-mother at the door, and said:
"Your new spirit, mother, will make us both so happy in the future! We'll
work together. What the master teaches me, I'll teach you."
"What--books?"
"Yes."
"O Gretchen, your heart is real good! But see here--my hair is gray. Oh, I
am sorry--what a woman I might have been!"
Gretchen lay down in the lodge that night beside the dusky wife of the
old chief. The folds of the tent were open, and the cool winds came in
from the Columbia, under the dim light of the moon and stars.
The _tepee_, or tent, was made of skins, and was adorned with
picture-writing--Indian poetry (if so it might be called). Overhead were
clusters of beautiful feathers and wings of birds. The old chief loved to
tell her stories of these strange and beautiful wings. There were the
wings of the condor, of the bald and the golden eagle, of the duck-hawk,
pigeon-hawk, squirrel-hawk, of the sap-sucker, of the eider duck, and a
Zenaider-like dove. Higher up were long wings of swans and albatrosses,
heads of horned owls, and beaks of the laughing goose. Through the still
air, from some dusky shallow of the river came the metallic calls of the
river birds, like the trumpeting swan. The girl lay waking, happy in
recalling the spirit with which her foster-mother had accepted her plan of
life.
Suddenly her sensitive spirit became aware of something unusual and
strange at the opening of the tent. There was a soft, light step without,
a guarded footfall. Then a tall, dark shadow distinctly appeared, with a
glitter of mother-of-pearl ornaments and a waving of plumes. It stood
there like a ghost of a vivid fancy, for a time. Gretchen's heart beat. It
was not an unusual thing for an Indian to come to the _tepee_ late in the
evening; but there was something mysterious and ominous in the bearing and
atmosphere of this shadowy visitor. The form stepped within the opening of
the tent, and a voice whispered, "Umatilla, awake!"
The old chief raised himself on his elbow with an "Ugh!"
"Come out under the moon."
The old chief arose and went out, and the two shadowy forms disappeared
among a column of spruces on the musical banks of the Columbia.
Gretchen could not sleep. The two Indians returned late, and, as they
parted, Gretchen heard Umatilla's deep voice say, "No!"
Her fears or instincts told her that the interview had reference to plots
which were associated with the great Potlatch, now near at hand. She had
heard the strange visitor say, "The moon is growing," and there was
something shadowy in the very tone in which the words were spoken.
Mrs. Woods sat down in her home of bark and splints all alone after
Gretchen's departure.
"She offers to teach me," she said to herself. "I am so sorry that I was
not able to teach her. I never read much, any way, until I came under the
influence of the Methody. I might have taught her spiritual things--any
one can have spiritual knowledge, and that is the highest of all. But I
have loved my own will, and to give vent to my temper and tongue. I will
change it all. There are times when I am my better self. I will only talk
and decide upon what is best in life at such times as these. That would
make my better nature grow. When I am out of sorts I will be silent-like.
Heaven help me! it is hard to begin all these things when one's hair is
turnin' gray, and I never knew any one's gray hair to turn young again."
She sat in the twilight crying over herself, and at last sang the mournful
minor measures of a very quaint old hymn with a peculiar old history:
"From whence doth this union arise
That hatred is conquered by love?
It fastens our souls in such ties
As distance and time can't remove."
The October moon came up larger and larger night by night. It stood on the
verge of the horizon now in the late afternoon, as if to see the
resplendent setting of the sun. One wandered along the cool roads at the
parting of day between the red sun in the west and the golden moon in the
east, and felt in the light of the two worlds the melancholy change in the
atmospheres of the year. The old volcanoes glistened, for a wintry crust
was widening over their long-dead ovens. Mount Saint Helens, as the far
range which led up to the relic of the ancient lava-floods that is now
known by that name was called by the settlers, was wonderfully beautiful
in the twilights of the sun and moon. Mount Hood was a celestial glory,
and the shadows of the year softened the glimmering glories of the
Columbia. The boatman's call echoed long and far, and the crack of the
flint-lock gun leaped in its reverberations from hill to hill as though
the air was a succession of hollow chambers. Water-fowl filled the streams
and drifted through the air, and the forests seemed filled with young and
beautiful animals full of happy life.